Foreigners seem to think that President Obama governs the United States. Maybe Obama does too. Wrong! Big companies with deep pockets to pay for lobbyists and the election expenses of politicians, pull the strings, along with a shady cabal of very rich people whose loyalty is only to themselves. In short the US political system is broke, or to put it more honestly, it is hopelessly corrupted. We have to do what we can to fight that corruption, probably hopeless though that is.

The authors at home on their native American reservation. "Powerless, we can only protest."

Yes! We have lost the war in Afghanistan. Everone knows it. All the historians in the U.S who know any history (about 3 people) warned the politicians that you cannot win in Afghanistan, but that hasn't stopped the warmongers. For some of them the war profit made by the military/industrial complex is more important than huge deficits and the death of young men.

Not only is the EU Britain's biggest trading partner, but she is deeply entwined commercially and economically with the EU. As for the United States, given a choice between the UK and the EU, the U.S would choose the EU.

At last! The U.S Supreme Court has legally handed over the American political system to an oligopoly of greedy, corrupt pols, CEOs and tycoons. Now we can sit back and be assured that the country is in competent hands. A creeping coup? Nonsense!

A startling discovery has recently been made in an undisclosed location on
the Dead Sea. A set of ancient scrolls has been unearthed, so sensitive
that the Israeli Government has tried to suppress it. A careless rabbi fortunately left
copies on a bus to Haifa.

A genuine and hilarious leaflet from Help
the Aged, in conjunction with Ken
Livingstone, Mayor of London. In the spirit of
what we thought at first was a joke,
we offer a further collection of
tips for the over 70s.

A fairy tale for our time. The hazel nut in Celtic
lore was equated with wisdom and poetic inspiration. A legend tells
the tale of a nut tree that grew by a sacred pool.
The tree shed its nuts into the pool. They were eaten
by a family of salmon. The number of bright spots
on the salmon, it is said, indicated the number of nuts
it had eaten and the depth of the wisdom it had
thereby absorbed.

What many corporations have quietly effected is a massive
transfer of time, effort, stress and frustration onto the final customer.
Intentional or not, this transfer is not captured in the persistent
drumbeat about the productivity of the American economy.

Science used to be seen as a rational and definitive
activity, the great outcome of the Enlightenment, a passport
to a better life for all the world's inhabitants. More recently
it has been used as a malleable weapon in the war
to protect commercial interests and to buttress the claims of the
religious right.

Long hours. Few benefits. Inadequate holidays. Small pensions.
Little worker protection. A degrading environment. A widening gap between rich
and poor. Declining health care. Increasing self-absorption and less
community spirit. Is this what we want from globalization, free
trade, privatization and the untrammeled power of the corporation?

If President Clinton is caught with his trousers down it triggers
impeachment. However, if Vice-President Cheney arranges for his old company
to get the best contracts in Iraq that's just fine.
Or is it?

The true, never-previously-revealed story of Bush's War Against Iraq,
and how The-Greatest-Country-Ever-in-the-History-of-the-
Universe fought back against the imperialist neo-cons and their
deeply ignorant hangers-on.

Unknown to the general public, Saddam Hussein has had access
to a computer and email and likes to send occasional messages
to some of the people who have done so much to
support him over the years. Here are some samples, sent to
Donald Rumsfeld and others, with copies to me.

Heard of hexavalent chromium? It was dumped by manufacturers in New Jersey,
poisoning the environment. No one was brought to task. A small
illustration of the effects of unrestrained, unaccountable capitalism.